Administrator Samantha Power at a Swearing-in Ceremony for Randy Ali as Mission Director for Morocco

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much. Thrilled to be here. I want to say a special hello to our Morocco team who I think are tuning in. Maybe we can put them up on the screen. Randy already knows them well and it is already clear who the boss is. They are the boss - that is very evident. Hello, everybody. Just wave. Nice to see you again. What an incredible team, Randy, that you get to be a part of. I'm really jealous, I guess they're my team too but I don't get to work with them directly every day.

I want to thank Ambassador [Youssef] Amrani for really capturing something that I feel so privileged to be a part of here at USAID, which is the way that programs create these ripples that then extend forward over generations and, you know, the number of times you meet somebody whether an Ambassador, you know, somebody who's achieved so much, or a farmer, or a young person with a big dream still ahead of them, who say: "USAID did this," "I got exposed to this from USAID," "Thank you, USAID." I think for all of us who are just inheritors of that legacy, we just feel so grateful to even, you know, be part of this legacy that has lasted over so many decades.

I want to also commend Ambassador Amrani for his tact - not just in pretending that I'm a good soccer player - but in pretending like he doesn't know the score of the U.S.-Morocco soccer game. You know, it's hard to be a graceful loser, but it's even harder to be a graceful winner and that is true diplomacy and tact at work.

Ambassador [Puneet] Talwar, an old friend of mine who I've worked with in the Obama Administration, is just really an ideal leader who has understood from day one what his marching orders are from President Biden and Vice President Harris, which is to grow and nurture this foundational partnership. Partnership in Africa, partnership in the Middle East. But, really, a partnership that - as the Ambassador spoke to - is a model partnership for what the United States is looking for all around the globe.

I want to join Andy [Plitt], our fearless Middle East Bureau leader, in welcoming Randy's family. His wife, Fo [Ali]; his three kids: Adam [Ali] is 12; Malcolm [Ali], 10; and Miral [Ali], who's 6.999999999, because I think she has a birthday coming up soon!

Special welcome as well to all of Randy's family and friends, including, of course, his mom, she must be thrilled that her son is now speaking Arabic every day. Finally, all that indoctrination of her boy is finally paying off professionally in a big way.

Many of the people who are joining today have been in Randy's life, I gather, for decades. And that speaks to his unusual ability to forge deep connections and to extend them. And, it was interesting talking to Randy and Fo's kids, but it's clear that they, too, are forging these deep connections in every post that they go to and - when contemplating a new Mission assignment and new family move - thinking to themselves, "will my friends from Ukraine be willing to visit me?" And it just really speaks to the spirit of the family: keep the people you love close, irrespective of the geographic distance that separates you.

Randy grew up in Staten Island, New York in a fairly small and tight-knit suburban community. He was the son of - is the son of - two Egyptian immigrants and spent most of his summers and many winters traveling back to Cairo to visit family and to reconnect with his roots. These immersive experiences instilled in him a hunger to explore the world and to serve in any way that he could.

From early on, Randy was always making, and keeping, and growing friendships. And on the first day of first grade, he made friends with a little girl who happened to live just down the street, and her name was Fo. That's right. Safe to say there are not two Fo's. I will not be later talking about a different Fo.

Fo was also the daughter of immigrants, her family hailing from Greece, and she remembers it gave them both the same fundamental awareness: as she put it, "We knew how big the world could be." As Fo and Randy grew up side by side, they biked around town together, they studied together, they watched countless Knicks and Mets games together, they saw each other date other people. They graduated and set off for college in New York - Fo to Binghamton and Randy to Syracuse. Subsequently, they went to law school at the same time - Fo to Brooklyn, Randy to Georgetown. But they didn't fall in love - or admit to falling in love - until they were doing the most romantic of all tasks: studying for the bar exam.

Fo and Randy celebrated their completion of the exam by taking a trip with friends to Greece, where, 20 years after they first met, they finally confessed their feelings for one another. Fo says she knew that their relationship was for real when she found herself consistently vacating the nice hotel that she and her girlfriends had rented to join Randy at his budget campsite.

From there, the two became inseparable. They both started jobs as high-powered lawyers, first in New York City, then in London. Randy specialized in corporate finance. And while he was talented and excelled in that work, he kept coming home from work at the end of the day feeling unsatisfied. He wanted to practice, as Fo put it, "a law that mattered more." So, he began taking development courses in his spare time and eventually took the Foreign Service exam and set on the path to becoming a USAID Foreign Service Officer.

Randy took on the role of a Regional Legal Officer in Manila, putting his legal skills to the kind of purposeful, fulfilling use that he had been pining for. While in the Philippines, he saw that consumers were increasingly demanding sustainable, traceable seafood, and plenty of fisheries in the Philippines and in Indonesia were eager to transform their practices and to meet that demand. Doing so, though, would require capital from investors - who typically perceive these small fisheries in emerging economies as too risky for their investment. So, Randy drafted and negotiated an agreement with a private equity firm in which USAID would guarantee these loans, lowering the risk for investors and mobilizing $17.5 million in private capital for more sustainable fisheries and healthier coastal ecosystems. This deal went on to win the Agency's "Innovative Deal of the Year Award" as, the citation put it, "the most exciting application to mobilize capital for development." So, Randy was ahead of the "progress beyond programs" movement. He was well ahead of his time, and he will fit right in in Morocco, where they are constantly thinking about how to leverage small, catalytic money to do big and super ambitious things.

In May 2017, crisis struck when an Islamic State-linked terrorist group launched a violent takeover of the Filipino city of Marawi in a barbaric siege that sparked five months of violent conflict, as the Filipino military fought to regain control. 360,000 people were displaced and amidst the brutality, Randy remained laser-focused on supporting the Filipino people in need. Once again leveraging his legal expertise, Randy led a working group to accelerate USAID's ability to deliver assistance by cutting through red tape, and streamlining procurement processes to enable USAID to provide rapid humanitarian assistance. Again, ahead of his time, in light of our burden reduction efforts and our efforts to work with local partners and not crowd them out by having too-steep barriers to entry.

In Pakistan, his next posting, he unfortunately was required to serve apart from his family. By then, Randy and Fo already had three young children. Fo and the kids remained in Manila, where Fo became inspired to join the State Department Foreign Service herself. Soon she was back to studying with Randy by her side, Randy drilling Fo relentlessly as she passed on the first try.

In 2019, Fo and Randy were assigned together to Ukraine, where they got to enjoy life as Foreign Service Officers in the same posting. Randy began his time in Ukraine as a Regional Legal Officer, but when the need arose, he stepped up as Acting Deputy Mission Director for a period of six months, helping to guide the Mission through the height of the COVID[-19] pandemic, and continuing to build Ukraine's resilience to counter what were already, evidently, growing threats from the Russian Federation. This work, of course, laid a very strong foundation for the resilience that Ukraine has tapped in fending off the brutality of Putin's full-scale invasion.

In 2022, Randy moved to Bangladesh, where he served as Deputy Mission Director until this year, and where he was able to marry his technical expertise with his deep empathy and love for people. He was a natural leader: calm and decisive, open and compassionate. From day one in Bangladesh, Randy set a high bar on localization - we got a lot of confetti, I would expect nothing less. Lots of confetti for compassion at USAID. But he set a high bar in Bangladesh on localization, and this is music, I know, to the Moroccan team's ears, making it clear that it was a top Mission priority. Randy stood up the Mission's first localization working group, which was led by the Mission's Foreign Service Nationals - our Bangladeshi staff - and that working group was dedicated to finding ways to place local actors in the lead across the Mission's portfolio.

He also made it a point to visit even the most remote communities throughout Bangladesh to try to get a grasp of the needs and perspectives of the widest possible range of Bangladeshi people, especially the most marginalized. Thanks to Randy's leadership, in just two years, the Mission increased prime awards to local actors from less than 5 percent of awards to over 30 percent, a really impressive jump yielding enormous dividends at the Mission, which of course houses USAID's largest portfolio in all of Asia. On a personal level, Randy continually looked for ways to support his team. Colleagues described how he would get coffee with team members irrespective of what their job was, what their level was. He would talk through not just work but their family successes and challenges, their hobbies.

As one put it, he has an amazing ability to connect with literally everybody. For the Ali's, Foreign Service had become a family affair. Together, they hosted their famous barbecues, they dressed up their kids in matching costumes for Halloween and toted them around the Mission. And in Adam's case, there was even apparently a dance performance that was put on at the Foreign Service National Family Day talent show. Am I correct? You remember that?

When urgent needs arose, though, Randy also showed up. One colleague commented, "Randy is a rare combination of someone who feels very deeply and also has a clear-eyed understanding of policy and law, which come together to make him an incredibly effective leader." When one Foreign Service National faced ongoing medical challenges that made it essential that he be able to telework, Randy worked with the Mission to expand this USAID staffer's telework allowance. He also harnessed his legal background to successfully raise the local insurance plan's coverage limit for medical catastrophes, working with the embassy to improve Foreign Service Nationals' lives and benefits on a systemic level. And Morocco team - let's take advantage of that law degree. There's lots of small print that could be subject to lots of different interpretations for a good lawyer.

When a beloved colleague from our Bangladeshi Mission fell dangerously ill, Randy traveled to Singapore, where she was at the time, to be by her side. He was there with her as her condition deteriorated and by her bedside as she passed away. But even amidst his own grief, Randy provided comfort and guidance to Mission colleagues throughout that devastating time. And just two weeks later, he facilitated a memorial ceremony where hundreds gathered to celebrate her life. It is that trademark empathetic, steady leadership that will make Randy such a strong leader of our mission in Morocco.

Morocco is one of the United States' oldest friends, with our diplomatic ties dating back more than 200 years. And, Morocco is playing an increasingly important regional role as an economic powerhouse, as an exporter of scientific knowledge - and, I should note, of fertilizer - and an accelerator of the shift that has to happen with greater haste globally, the shift to clean energy. Today, Morocco has the capacity to generate more than one-third of its electricity from renewable sources of energy, and it has set a goal of increasing this to 52 percent by 2030, which is just around the corner. This already makes Morocco a leader not just in the region, but all around the world. Morocco is also working to implement important reforms to increase freedom of expression and association, to strengthen criminal justice, and to advance women's rights. In my recent visit to Morocco, I witnessed the Moroccan people's extraordinary determination to keep driving progress, and the USAID Mission's commitment to investing in local leaders, to learning from them, to letting them be the drivers of our development partnership. I was struck by how the Mission talks about locally-led development as their North Star. In all of their partnerships and programs, they're asking the question: "How does this address local priorities and strengthen local systems?"

There are countless examples. The Ambassador and I just talked about this in the last couple of weeks, of USAID doing a small pilot program, for example, in the education sector, learning what works, how it can be refined, and then the entire Ministry of Education running with the findings and instilling those findings and that curriculum throughout Morocco. To be catalytic and to be doing everything in service of the systemic changes and the systemic drivers of the development agenda, that really is a model for how things should work everywhere. The Mission team members are partnering with Moroccans and taking their cue, again, from their Moroccan counterparts in government, in civil society, in the media, in rural areas, in urban areas, across culture. It is fundamentally Moroccan voices that are driving what USAID is doing from start to finish. From restoring schools in the wake of the earthquake, to providing health and nutrition support, to helping citizens start businesses that are themselves creating jobs and also bolstering the Moroccan economy.

Since 2021, our Morocco Mission has more than doubled the percentage of funding going to local organizations, from 16 percent in 2021 to almost 40 percent in 2023. And, you know, the Ambassador may hear these and think only 40 percent! But what you should know is how rare these kinds of numbers are across USAID, and all the gravity that has to be fought that cuts in favor of going back to the same implementing partners again and again. Breaking new ground means doing more work. And that is what the Moroccan team on the ground has done.

They have taken it upon themselves, driven principally by our Foreign Service Nationals, who have taken up leadership roles in every aspect of how the Moroccan Mission functions and without whom no key decisions are made. I hope the rest of USAID and the broader development community can continue to learn from the extraordinary leadership of our team on the ground, and again, very specifically our Moroccan Foreign Service Nationals who have been driving progress beyond programs, again, well before it was a mantra of ours back here at headquarters.

Randy, you've already experienced this amazing team up close. You're bringing technical skills, a lawyer's creative license, a lot of compassion, deep relationships that you have built all over the world. You are a proven leader and you are deploying - and have deployed - with your family to a post where we have the possibility to do enormous good together, both in Morocco for the Moroccan people first and foremost, but also taking that model elsewhere and indeed, harnessing Morocco's leadership so you can do even greater good in Africa and beyond.

So, congratulations to you, a little belatedly since you're already in the post, but we're going to make it official today. And, I want to thank your entire family for your service. You really are making a major difference in the lives of so many. So, we're so grateful.

Thank you.

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